The Human Division Listen-A-Long: Episode 8: The Sound of Rebellion by John Scalzi

As part of The Human Division Listen-A-Long, hosted by The Audiobookaneers, I will be posting my thought on each episode on the Friday after release. If you are involved in the Listen-A-Long, or Read-A-Long, or just posting your thoughts each week, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments and I will add it to my weekly roundup of post.

It’s week 8 of The Human Division Listen-A-Long and we have started what is commonly referred to as The Home Stretch. This week’s episode was "The Sound of Rebellion" was interesting. For fun, let me give you a timeline of how my reactions went.

Oh, another episode away from the B-Team. I’m cool with that.

What a polite interrogator to promise no torture. Don’t trust her Lt. Whatsyourname.

Honestly, I’m still not sure what to think of The Sound of Rebellion. I liked the character of Lt. Heather Lee, and found it overall kind of clever. I thought the auditory mapping was pretty cool, even if part of me doubted it was a plausible scenario to develop under such a stressful situation. I also thought there was a lot of valuable information being given to us as readers and listeners, I just really couldn’t figure out what that valuable information was or how it would be important later. I think part of me is becoming just a bit frustrated, because I’m still waiting for that "A Ha!" moment that I know will be coming when pieces start falling into place. Yet, with all my problems, I loved the kick ass action scene. The whole episode had a bit of a 24 in Space feel to it, or maybe Alias on another planet, and I always like to see mean ole torturers get their comeuppance. So, this was probably my least favorite episode so far, but it still totally kicked ass, and I know others out there probably loved it.

One of the interesting conundrums with audiobooks is that sometimes there are audio clues to some mystery that can be revealed by a narrator. For instance, there was a novel where the surprise bad guy was the only Irish character in the book, and in some of the scenes where the "mastery" bad guy talked, the narrator used an Irish accent, pretty much telling us all who the bad guy was. In this episode, the main bad guy was called "2" and the character used voice distortion to keep her capture from recording her voice. I think when you become quite familiar with a narrator, you often become to spot their opposite sex characters. Despite the fact that the voice was distorted, I couldn’t help by think, "That sounds like William Dufris’ Lady Voice." Well, I leave it up to you all to determine if that was correct, because no spoilers. That being said, I liked Dufris work in this episodes. He kept me interested in the slower parts, and smacked me with his pacing when the excitement came. Now, next week, it’s The Observers, who will Observe things, probably with multiple senses.